They may not all have turned into Rosie the Riveter, but women’s lives certainly changed once their men went off to battle. Alan Brody’s new play, “The Housewives of Mannheim,” focuses on four Jewish women living in the same apartment house in 1944 Flatbush who find different paths to growth and fulfillment in the absence of their husbands. When “Housewives” ran last year with the same cast at the New Jersey Rep in Long Branch, Robert L. Daniels of Variety called it a “keenly constructed and beautifully acted romantic drama.”

As the chasidic sect’s leader goes to jail, remembering his great-uncle and a remarkable Holocaust photo album.

05/04/2010

Peter Hellman

Special To The Jewish Week

This week, an undisclosed federal prison will become the new address of prisoner No. 46835-112, Naftali Tzvi Weisz, known to his thousands of followers as the Grand Rabbi of Spinka of Borough Park. Last December, Weisz, 61, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to heading up a decade-long, $10 million money-laundering scheme in which donors to Spinka charitable institutions secretly received kickbacks of up to 95 percent of their donations. The rabbi’s gabbai, or assistant, Moshe Zigelman, also received a two-year sentence.

Eddie Antar, the man at the heart of the Crazy Eddie fraud scandal, has never really told his side of the story. He appeared briefly on a cable talk show with his cousin, Sam, a couple of years ago, but said little other than tacitly forgiving his former CFO for turning government witness in the case that sent Eddie and some other relatives to jail.

Rabbi Eli Garfinkel, rabbi of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey and the techie behind the award-winning RabbiPod, has created his first app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad family of Apple devices.

After much debate and despite predictions of a schism, the Rabbinical Council of America, the nation’s largest group of Orthodox rabbis, this week approved without dissent a carefully balanced resolution on women’s communal roles in Orthodox Jewish life.

The statement affirms a longstanding prohibition of women rabbis but allows congregational rabbis flexibility in determining appropriate roles for women in their synagogues and communities.

Oversight committee will publish a list of those who comply and those who don’t in the fall.

04/27/2010

Adam Dickter

Assistant Managing Editor

A committee appointed to promote more transparency among charities in the Sephardic communities of Brooklyn and Deal, N.J, prompted by the arrests last year of three prominent Syrian rabbis on money-laundering charges, says that only six of some 30 organizations with tax-exempt status have agreed to a slate of voluntary operating guidelines.

Posing in a black-banded khaki-colored fedora as kitschy klezmer Muzak introduces his routine, Neil Lawner gestures loudly with outstretched arms and tells a joke about newlywed Luigi, who rode a train to Florida with his new bride Virginia, and tragically, mistook the station stop “Norfolk” for a prohibition in his marriage consummation.

As the controversy over women’s roles within Modern Orthodoxy has roiled over the past few months, the leadership of the largest body of Orthodox rabbis in the U.S. has consistently pointed to its upcoming national conference as the time for sorting out, dealing with and resolving the thorny issue.

Now, on the eve of the Rabbinical Council of America’s convention — and with women edging closer to rabbinic duties in some high-profile synagogues — some members suggest expectations may be too high.

In innovative chesed program, teens become experts
in dispensing the best medicine (laughter).

04/20/2010

Tamar Snyder

Staff Writer

It’s weeks after Purim, but a group of students from Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn are pulling colorful wigs out of their bags, smudging white paint on their faces and drawing bright red circles and stars on their cheeks. They’re prepping with excitement for a visit to CareOne at Teaneck, a nursing and rehabilitation center located in Bergen County, N.J.

But first, they must learn the art of balloon animals — and the importance of bikur cholim (visiting the sick).

Israel’s 16-year honeymoon with the White House (under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) is over, and the tension between Jerusalem and the Obama administration is “dramatic and considerable,” according to the senior diplomatic correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.

Herb Keinon, a native of Denver who has lived in and covered Israel for 27 years, spoke of “conceptual gaps on two major planes” between the allies in a talk Sunday evening at Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck, N.J.